Penrose Park Rec Reserve Silverton NSW - $1M Upgrade

I'm with Jack on this. They'll stuff it with bollards, up the fees and totally take away the bush feel. Sorry to be negative, but that's what money does.

My earlier comment was as a day visitor, not a camper. Losing the bush camp feeling would be a tragedy.

Agree with keeping the camping and character, hopefully those thoughts have made their way into the survey.

The way the NSW Gov, is going do you really think anything at all is going to happen!.




Cheers Axle.

The place used to be a nice picnic ground. Looking at historical photos it used to be a nice place. I have not camped there but each time i have visited it in the last 25 years it looked less inviting. As it is it does not invite me to camp there.

It will be god to see it restored to its former glory.

NN is correct. It's well over 50 years since I first went there, perhaps closer to 60, and it was indeed a very pleasant picnic / day use area back in the day. Those historical photos weren't lying.

But last time I called in there a couple of years ago for old times sake, it was in a sad state, a pale imitation of its former glory. That may well reflect what I perceive as the general decline of Broken Hill, and the lack of water in nearby Silverton.

TBH I wasn't aware of the opportunity to bush camp there. I suspect that any restoration of the park is going to go hand-in-hand with destroying the character of the camping.

Perhaps the renovation will be sympathetic to the park's origins, in which case I'll shelve my cynicism.

From this ABC link:

[quote]
Rustic origins not forgotten
Penrose Park, named after former Silverton mayor John Penrose, has a rich history.

A 6,000-strong crowd was on hand when it was opened as a recreational reserve for miners and their families in 1937.

More improvements would be made when the final round of funding was made available in the second half of this year, but Ms Hawke said they would not be veering from the origins or the rustic feel of the much-loved location.

"It is an outback park, it's not a Big 4 Discovery, but it definitely had very aged infrastructure," she said.

"We need to make sure, whatever we are doing, we maintain that outback experience.

"People want to the see the stars, they want to sit around a campfire, they are wanting to keep the features of Penrose Park."
[/quote]

I just hope that after the work is done there are enough financial and local resources to keep it maintained.